


down from the door where it began

by Makari Crow (Beanna)



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Gen, Post-Game, Tales of Secret Santa 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 06:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17617061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beanna/pseuds/Makari%20Crow
Summary: Tear and Natalia find some quiet time to talk, in the months after Eldrant, on the nature of music, memory, and what the Seventh Fonon brings to such things. What's a song, when you sing for fighting?





	down from the door where it began

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AyuOhseki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyuOhseki/gifts).



> This is a slightly belated Tales of Secret Santa pinch-hit, written for ayu-ohseki. It is totally, definitely, entirely still the holiday season. Shhhh. _Shhhhh._
> 
> Cheers! I hope it suits.

Someone's singing, and Tear can't quite place it, though she feels like she should be able to name both singer and song. She lifts her head from the task at hand, turns to listen closer—abruptly remembers she was in the middle of something. She colors as she looks down again, automatically ducking to make her hair swing to cover any signs of embarrassment.

The patient she's working on isn't conscious to see, but habit is as habit does. Tear doesn't hum as she finishes the healing arte, then stands, and slowly, carefully, stretches. There's a different kind of discipline needed working healing artes in hospitals; a little here, a little there, never exhaust yourself on one patient. Certainly far removed from the urgent, mid-battle work she had grown so accustomed to.

Gently, Tear puts that thought away. It's a piece of chance and insomnia that has her here in the first place. She visits Baticul a fair piece, these days — as strange as it is that she is now an honored guest where once she invaded with murderous intent. Still, there's something about shared griefs that means she can keep the duchess, at least, good company. Tonight she couldn't sleep for the hymns in her dreams; and so she had made her way down the city to the hospital Natalia founded. At least if she couldn't sleep she could tire herself doing something useful.

_ But who is singing...? _

It's nagging her with being familiar and not quite. Tear brushes her tunic back into place as she goes out into the hall, tracking the sound. Down this hall, around a corner — it's coming from one of the larger, shared rooms, for those who don't need quite as much specialized attention. Tear hesitates in the doorway, wondering if she ought to, then leans in. 

“Oh!” Startled recognition comes out of her before she can stop it.

Now observed, the singer inhales sharply, stopping. Her eyes are wide as she turns around. “—Tear? What are you doing here?”

For several moments Tear just stares at Natalia. Has she ever heard the princess sing? Surely that's why she didn't recognize it.

“Tear?” 

“Right.” Tear shakes her head to clear it, comes a few steps further in. Now that she's noticing things properly again, she sees Natalia is dressed for working — but in this case it means old, neat clothes, gauze and bloodstains, gloves and antiseptic. “I... couldn't sleep, so I thought... it would be better to be doing something.”

Natalia's expression softens into something more wistful. “Yes,” she says. “I understand. Will you join me?” 

Tear can't think of a reason not to. She comes further into the room, stopping beside the bed Natalia's near. It looks like Natalia's been occupied with changing dressings, and most people here are asleep. With some of the injuries, Tear suspects sedation, which is well enough for this hour. “Is it the same for you?” she asks, keeping her voice low.

Gently Natalia nods, lifting her hand to scrub the back of her wrist across her forehead. “Strictly speaking,” she says, “I shouldn't be down here unaccompanied, but it's safe here, and I can take care of myself.” 

“I suppose you aren't unaccompanied any longer,” Tear says. “Do you need help?” 

“Hold this, please.” 

So there's a companionable quiet for a little while, broken mostly by instructions and murmured  _ yes _  and  _ no _ , as Tear runs on automatic and tries to find the words for her question. In the end she doesn't entirely find the grace she wants, but as Natalia stands and gathers her things, and as they move toward the hall again, the words simply happen. “You were— singing,” Tear says, hesitant but not sure she can stop. “I didn't know you did. What was it?” 

Natalia glances to her side at Tear, head tilted in curiosity for a moment or two. “It was only a hymn,” she says. “One of the first ones I learned as a child.” She pauses. Tear doesn't know what to say to her then. Of course, there are those hymns which are sung in the Order, songs of Lorelei and faith and trust in the Score, and Tear knows them — should know them. Had known them at one point, certainly. “Is it different, for melodists? I know the songs that can serve as artes are specific, but... then again, your hymns are rather unlike a standard melodist's artes.”

Tear takes too long to realize a question's been asked. “Is it different— singing, you mean?” 

At this Natalia nods, quick and darting. “I've never,” she says, with a little frown of concentration between her brows. “Even though I'm a Seventh Fonist — like you — for me, artes have always been artes, and songs have always been songs. But the Seventh Fonon...”

The thought occurs belatedly that perhaps Natalia is just as awkward about Tear as Tear is about her. And that's a strange thing to think about, too, for Natalia is always so good at appearing composed, even in the worst of times. The idea that Natalia might not know what to do in any given social situation is, frankly, astounding. 

“I'm sorry,” Tear says, shaking her head. It feels like she's outside herself a little, these days. “It's— difficult to describe. I've focused on the hymns to the exclusion of much else. I suppose— I hadn't really thought about separating music from artes.” Not recently. When she dreams, it's still the Grand Fonic Hymn that haunts the corners of it, and most of what she hums under her breath somehow winds up being the pieces of it even before she realizes it. It's as though she is all made up of Yulia’s hymns, and she is too small to contain such things. 

“That seems sad,” Natalia says. Immediately as Tear looks over, she grimaces, going a little pink across her cheeks. “No, that came out poorly, I'm sorry. It's only—”

“It's all right.” Tear cuts her off before either of them can embarrass each other too much further. “Looking back, the Seventh Fonic Hymn was... perhaps the first song I ever knew. My mother sang it to me while she still carried me; and when our parents died, Van...” She has to stop to even out her expression. 

Natalia doesn't interrupt, only mutely points out the supply closet she needs to store some of what she's carrying. Tear stands to the side as Natalia organizes, putting herself back together as tidily as Natalia does the bandages.

“I suppose,” Tear says eventually, “there wasn't ever a time when music was only music, for me.” Maybe once— but even back then, Van had been teaching her the hymns before she truly realized she was learning them. All along the way, music has been a tool, or a power. A mystery, a quest. The pact with Lorelei.

Did she ever sing just to  _ sing _ ? 

Natalia shuts the closet door, turns around to lean back against it, so that she and Tear are standing beside each other. “Does it bother you?” Natalia asks. 

Tear doesn't know how to answer that. “What is it like for you?” she asks instead of answering. “Music. Singing.”

“Hmm.” Natalia clasps her hands together before her, bows her head slightly to consider this. Tear's more than happy to give her the time to think, time to put her own emotions in order. This late the hospital is not so very active, without any immediate emergencies. “It's warm,” she says finally, looking up. “That's what I think it is. The hymns I learned when I was younger... they're the sort that everyone is supposed to sing together, you know? Everyone's voice fills up the space, until it’s so big that’s all there is, and it feels like... like being part of the world.” She flushes again. “When I say it out loud like that, it just sounds silly.” 

“No, I don't think so.” Tear tilts her head back to rest against the wall, as if she can see the stars outside. “I said Van used to sing to me,” she says, and it hurts less than it had once, doesn't stick in her throat nearly as badly. “Before I even knew what it was. When I think of those times, it's something like you describe. As if his singing was a way to feel that he loved me.”

“Tear...”

Tear doesn't look over to see what she predicts is a sympathetic face. Kindness, sometimes, is worse. It is easier to stand firm when you know there is nothing waiting to catch you. “When he was away, the hymns made me feel... closer.” It's much like Natalia describes, she thinks, only specific to one person. “And now...”

Now Yulia's hymns are like kind ghosts, but Tear doesn't know how to put this into good words, either. 

Eldrant seems like a very long time ago.

“You don't have to talk about it,” Natalia offers gently. 

Tear does, though. It all ties in. She pushes off the wall, stands straight, allows her hair to settle as half a veil between her and the rest of the world. “Should we go back?” She thinks it will be easier outside, where the air is fresher and the sky visible, and nothing can possibly make her think of Yulia City.

“Hm?” Natalia straightens up to match, looks back down the hall. “I suppose it's gotten quite late. ...Very well.” 

There's only the click of boot heels and the faint underlying hum of machinery to accompany them as they go. Natalia is politer than Tear, bidding a formal farewell to the person at the front desk. Outside, Tear breathes easier as they begin to move back up the city, and now she does watch the stars even though they seem a very long way away.

“Now,” Tear says slowly, “the hymns are... a way to feel close to the people who aren't here anymore.” It doesn't sound quite right, but it's a start. Tear swallows against a dry throat, can't bring herself quite to look at Natalia’s face. “Singing them, or hearing them, or thinking I hear them. It isn't just memories,” she adds hastily. “It's not just that I think of my brother. It's... It feels as though he's in the hymns, somehow.” Sometimes Luke. Mostly Van, but the Van she remembers before, not the one she had to fight. They are the same person, and yet they couldn't be more different. 

“Oh,” Natalia says, sounding wistful. And then, “Well, why shouldn't he be? I— hm.” Tear knows the sound of Natalia stepping delicately around a more blunt answer, and appreciates the consideration. “While I can't claim to have anything like your feelings for him, it certainly isn't out of the question for the Seventh Fonon to carry memories, is it? And we all know Yulia's hymns are more than normal songs.”

“I... hadn't thought of it like that.” Tear looks over at her, wide-eyed. It seems now like the simplest thing, the most elementary lesson — the Seventh Fonon is created by fonons of all elements blending with memory particles, and this is how the Seventh Fonon reads the memory of the planet. Of course she knows this. She's a Seventh Fonist. And yet the concept that a song could not only stir memory, but carry it along; that she isn't only imagining it, that she does feel her brother's love as it was — this is a new thought. 

“I'm afraid I don't know quite enough about it to say for sure,” Natalia says, a little primly. “But then again, one way or another, if that's what you feel, then do the precise mechanics matter?” 

Tear doesn't think they do. Oh, there's certainly something there, and she could analyze it down to the bare mechanics, perhaps something of the way a song excites the Seventh Fonons to interact with whatever intent she brings into it — but she doesn't necessarily want to, either. Let it stay something ephemeral, for once, something between heart and mind. 

A clearer memory is all Tear can reasonably ask the world to give back to her, right now. Luke promised he'd come back, and she's opting to believe that, so she doesn't  _ need _  to grieve him yet, surely? She'll give him time. 

But thoughts of this nature lead her to another conclusion, as so often they do. Luke could make that promise; Asch could not, and all over again Tear feels her stomach drop, thinking of Natalia. The princess does not even have this comfort, does she? Only the past, and mortal memory fades over time. 

It isn't fair. Tear should have long ago learned that fairness is a concept for children, but she still wishes the world could be fair. “Natalia,” she says, unvarnished and sudden, before she can think better of it. “I'm sorry.”

Natalia reaches over, touches Tear's shoulder, and when Tear looks up Natalia's eyes are bright in the way of unshed tears, but there is nothing uncertain about her expression. “Asch and I sang together, sometimes,” she says. “When he was Luke, before— everything. It was nothing special, really, only— the same songs everyone learns, the same occasions. But there are still times when I can sing those same songs, and I think I hear his voice there, too.”

Tear knows this feeling, in some way. All she can quite manage is to place her hand over Natalia's, to have this moment of sympathy. Harmony, or something like it. 

They stay there for more than a few moments. Tear doesn't know how to break away, nor necessarily if she wants to step away from the simple human comfort of knowing someone else feels, at least in part, how she does. Eventually Natalia takes her hand back gently, faintly pink around the edges, and brushes at the edges of her old traveling tunic. “You said earlier you didn't recognize the hymn I was singing,” she says, as they start to walk again. “But you were raised in Yulia City, weren't you?”

Tear nods, automatically adjusts for the fall of her hair. “I was raised steeped in the Order’s teachings, yes,” she says by way of agreement. “And I'm sure I learned the early songs at some point. But once I started to really study as an Oracle Knight — once I was learning and re-learning Yulia's hymns, and how to use them in combat — everything else simply wasn't as important.”

“That's right,” Natalia says, recollecting. “You said something to that effect earlier.” She gives Tear a thoughtful, sidelong look. “Well. What if I teach you?”

“—what?” Tear doesn't think she's heard correctly.

Natalia, back to primness, folds her hands together as she walks. “Yulia's hymns are special, of course. Both to you, for your memories, and as artes. But you said yourself you knew others at one point, so it would be more like reminding than teaching. If you like.” 

“Why would you do that?” Tear tilts her head, realizes only a little late she might have been a shade too blunt. “I mean— it would be nice, I'm just not sure I understand.” 

The stars only grow brighter as they make their way up the city, back to where they came from. Eventually, Tear doesn't need to worry about watching where she puts her feet. Natalia takes a little while to answer, and in the interim there is Baticul, metal and salt-scent, starlight and wistfulness.

“You said you didn't remember a time when music was only music,” Natalia says finally. “I thought it might be nice for you to have the option just to sing, if you wanted it. Not for artes, or memories, or anything else. Just because. That way, whatever you want to take from it is your choice.” She's frowning a little by the time she finishes, brows knit in concentration.

Tear doesn't know what to say. She doesn't even know what it would be like, any more, to sing just because. Because it sounds nice, or because it feels warm, or because she likes the sound of a song. It feels like a hideous luxury. 

It feels like, perhaps, a way to craft new memories, moving forward. Tear tucks her hair behind her ear for once, offers Natalia a tentative smile. “Yes,” she says. “Thank you.”

Natalia brightens, and Tear sees the way forward. 

**Author's Note:**

>   * The prompt I jumped off of was "The nature of song, the Seventh Fonon, and reality itself when all matter is based on sound." It's gone a little astray, I think, but I'd need several thousand more words for the level of existential examination I'd want to hit. I hope it's at least come somewhere near.
>   * I was advised that Natalia and Tear were favorite characters, and I'm just sorry I couldn't quite fit Anise in too -- all these ladies need more love, tbh.
>   * Title shamelessly yanked from Tolkien. "The Road goes ever on and on/ down from the door where it began/ now far ahead the Road has gone/ and I must follow, if I can."
>   * Always happy to chatter about Abyss. <3
> 



End file.
